Big Ten needs to get out of its bowl rut

My voice grew hoarse the past three months due to overuse by singing my sentimental ode to Big Ten football. The conference simply provided too many opportunities for lampooning.

The bowl season doesn't offer a remedy, simply another reminder.

There is no shot at redemption through a bowl lineup rendered generally worthless with 13 of the 70 participants (nearly 20 percent) with the minimum six victories. The Big Ten provided three of those teams: Michigan State, Minnesota and Purdue.

The conference's lone BCS representative bears an asterisk. Wisconsin stamping 70 points on Nebraska doesn't hide the fact that the Badgers become the first five-loss team to play in the Rose Bowl.

And then just days after that, Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema bolted a school that has gone to Pasadena three consecutive years for a middle-of-the-road SEC program in Arkansas because he thought the long-range competitive and financial possibilities were better there.

The bowl season hadn't even started, and the SEC recorded its first victory over the Big Ten.

The final insult could be Wisconsin's inability so far to attract a national "name" to fill the opening at one of the Big Ten's higher-profile programs. According to reports, the Badgers approached Al Golden of Miami (Fla.), but he turned them down.

Let me get this straight.

The Hurricanes are under NCAA investigation for allegations of some of the more nakedly obscene excessive benefits in memory.

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They already have removed themselves from bowl consideration the past two years because they know the NCAA is going to hammer them hard with massive scholarship losses and hope to lessen the blow with preemptive self-imposed sanctions.

And Golden doesn't think Wisconsin provides a suitable career lifeboat?

In some ways, the Big Ten embodies the antiquated thinking of the current bowl process. It's married to an outdated idea that just attending a bowl -- regardless of where it's played or how low it's ranked on the postseason totem pole -- supersedes the steady erosion in ticket sales and television ratings.

Either folks can't see the truth staring them in the face or they refuse to accept it.

Bowls just aren't the big deal they once were. There should be fewer games. Give those teams with six or seven victories the three weeks of additional practice time -- the only real value today in bowl eligibility. Cut the athletic departments a check that they can apply to balancing their bottom lines. Give the coaches their bowl bonuses even if there isn't an actual game. Give the players their very popular bowl gift bags.

Offer the perks. Just don't bore everyone with the games.

According to a recent ESPN report, the three 6-6 Big Ten bowl teams have sold only a combined 6,500 of their total 29,000-ticket allotment. The Spartans have sold less than 20 percent of their 11,000 tickets for the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl in which the winning team gets to name its own spicy dipping sauce.

Nebraska travels better than most programs, but it has sold only a third of its allotted tickets for the Capital One Bowl.

The secondary bowls once were a source of pride, an opportunity to salute a team and a season one final time. It didn't have to be a trip to one of the major games in Pasadena, New Orleans or Miami. It could have been spending a couple days in Atlanta, San Diego, Orlando or Jacksonville. Maybe even El Paso, Texas, if the matchup looked reasonably attractive.

But those days are gone, a link to a past that no longer exists. And it only will worsen once the four-team "playoff" begins in 2014, using current bowls as a national semifinal platform.

The overabundance of bowls has turned the entire experience into an unnecessary chore rather than a worthwhile endeavor. Aside from the national championship game and precious few exceptions this year, the bowl season has become a waste of time and consumer dollars.

Perhaps that's why the Big Ten feels so comfortably at home in the present arrangement.